Law Enforcement

Do you think that is an alarmist headline? Well, I am not the one saying this. Law enforcement authorities all over the country are telling citizens that they can no longer deal with all the crime and that people need to lock their doors and prepare to defend their families. Just recently, the city attorney of San Bernardino, California told citizens to “lock their doors and load their guns” because there is not enough money to pay for adequate police protection any longer. The murder rate in San Bernardino is up 50 percent this year, but the city is dealing with bankruptcy and has been forced to lay off 80 police officers. But San Bernardino is not the only city dealing with this kind of a thing. In Oakland, burglaries are up 43 percent so far this year, and to say that there is a “crime wave” going on in Oakland would be a massive understatement. If you can believe it, in Oakland “more than 11,000 homes, cars or businesses have been broken into so far this year – translating to about 33 burglaries a day.” Sadly, there simply are not enough police to keep up with it all. Due to budget cuts, it is being projected that by February the size of the police force in Oakland will be about 25 percent smaller than it was back in 2008. But what is happening in Detroit is perhaps even more frightening. Today there are about 1,000 fewer police officers in Detroit than there was a decade ago. But crime just continues to rise. So now even the police are telling people to “enter Detroit at your own risk“. With very little police protection, an increasing number of citizens are taking matters into their own hands. As I noted in a previous article, justifiable homicide in the city of Detroit increased by 79 percent in 2011, and the rate of self-defense killings in Detroit is approximately 2200 percent above the national average. But don’t laugh at what is happening in cities like San Bernardino, Oakland and Detroit. What is happening in those cities will be coming to your community soon enough.

From coast to coast, criminals are becoming increasingly bold and increasingly desperate. My sister lives near a large city in the middle part of the country, and a house across the street from the one her family just moved into was recently vandalized. The criminals took all of the exposed copper pipe and copper wire that could be accessed easily.

Other criminals have become very focused on gold because it has soared in value and it is easy to resell. For example, there have been more than 250 gold chain robberies in Stockton, California just since the month of April. According to the CBS News affiliate in Sacramento, criminals are just ripping these chains right off of the necks of unsuspecting citizens, and many of the victims that have tried to resist have ended up getting hurt. Normally the criminals sell off the jewelry within 24 hours, so solving these crimes is a real challenge…

Most victims of the robberies are female (65 percent), and 44 percent of victims are age 50 or older, the data showed. The most common time of day for the crimes were between 12 and 5 p.m., though this only accounts for about a third of the crime.

Parino said robbers took even police by surprise initially.

“When [criminals] do these crimes, they normally get rid of the items within 24 hours,” he said.

That’s why police are now checking up on secondhand stores and pawn shops on a weekly basis.

Personally, there are many major U.S. cities that I would not want to be living right in the middle of right now.

Just take a look at Chicago. It has become one of the deadliest major cities on the entire globe. In recent years we have seen massive cuts to the police budget coupled with a dramatic increase in gang activity in Chicago.

The murder rate in Chicago is way up this year and the police force is massively outnumbered.

As I have written about previously, there are only about 200 police officers assigned to Chicago’s Gang Enforcement Unit. It is their job to handle the estimated 100,000 gang members living in the city.

How would you like to be outnumbered 100,000 to 200?

When things really hit the fan, Chicago is going to be a complete and utter nightmare.

And sometimes we get a peek into how people will behave when things break down. Just look at what happened during the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.

If you can believe it, some criminals actually took advantage of the Thanksgiving holiday to loot homes in the Breezy Point neighborhood of Queens. That was the neighborhood where approximately 100 homes burned down. The suffering of the residents of that neighborhood made headlines all over the nation. But that has not stopped criminals from moving in and taking advantage of their vulnerability…

Cops told the victims burglaries are on the rise in Breezy Point.

There were 14 home break-ins from Nov. 12 to Nov. 18, compared with none a year before.

And in the 28 days before that, there were 48 burglaries. Only four break-ins were reported in that time period the year before.

In the days after Sandy, some of the hardest-hit areas were plagued with store looting, home burglaries, street muggings and other crimes.

There are some very sick people out there. These days you simply do not know who you can trust. The person you meet on the street may be perfectly fine or they may be a total sicko. It is so hard to tell. But without a doubt there are a lot of sickos out there. Just check out what authorities in Pennsylvania found recently…

Animal welfare workers say 11 puppies were found dead and skinned near an eastern Pennsylvania park.

Sadly, authorities in that area had come across another similar incident recently…

The discovery is second disturbing incident in the county in less than a week. About 20 miles away in Lynn Township police say a dog was discovered skinned and cooked.

Who would do such things?

What in the world is happening to this country?

Things are changing, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. As conditions shift, we are all going to have to carefully evaluate what is necessary to protect our families. Don’t ignore all of the warning signs. Sticking our heads in the sand and pretending that everything is going to be okay is not going to help anything.

So what do all of you think about all of this? Please feel free to post a comment with your opinion below…

Right now, we are watching the early rounds of a heavyweight fight between two extremely determined opponents. Occupy Wall Street has no plans of losing this fight and neither do law enforcement authorities. Perhaps those running the show actually believed that raiding Zuccotti Park and more than a dozen other “Occupy camps” around the nation would end these protests, but that is just not going to happen. Whatever your opinion of Occupy Wall Street is, everyone should be able to agree that this is one dedicated bunch. They are absolutely obsessed with their cause and in response to the recent raid on Zuccotti Park organizers are calling for “a national day of direct action” on Thursday. But if Occupy Wall Street protesters want to take things to “the next level”, they should not underestimate the resolve of the police state. Over the past decade, the homeland security apparatus of the federal government has been slowly but surely turning this country into a “Big Brother” police state. Today, our law enforcement authorities are obsessed with watching us, listening to us, tracking us, recording us, and gathering information on all of us. We are constantly reminded that we live in a prison grid (just think about what they do to you before you are allowed on an airplane) and they are not about to put up with anyone challenging their authority or their control. Have you even known parents that constantly feel the need to prove that they are “the boss” of their children? Well, that is essentially what the homeland security apparatus in this country has become. All over the United States, law enforcement personnel are taught that every American is a potential terrorist and they are actually trained to “act tough”, to bark orders at us and to not let anyone question their authority. If Occupy Wall Street believes that it can get the police state to “back down”, they are sorely mistaken. Hopefully everyone will cool off a bit as the temperatures go down this winter. But if we do see a “cooling off”, it probably will not last for long. As the U.S. economy continues to get worse, these kinds of protests are going to keep growing and they will become even more intense. Eventually, mass civil unrest will cause the streets of many of our major cities to closely resemble war zones. When it is all said and done, this is not going to end well for any of us.

The stunning police raid of Zuccotti Park at 1 AM on Tuesday morning made headlines around the world. Protesters were hauled off, tents were cut down and garbage trucks hauled off the personal possessions of those that had been encamped there. It was swift and it was brutal.

But it was just another in a long line of raids that we have seen over the past couple of weeks. Occupy camps in Portland, Oakland, Chicago, San Francisco, Dallas, Atlanta and several other cities have also been raided.

There is an increasing body of evidence that these raids have been coordinated. For example, Oakland Mayor Jean Quan recently made the following statement during a recent interview about the Occupy movement….

I was recently on a conference call with 18 cities across the country who had the same situation

Does anyone want to guess who was running that conference call?

Heidi Bogosian, the executive director of the National Lawyers Guild, is convinced that the recent raids were coordinated at the federal level….

“We definitely feel, especially in a movement like this that has arisen so quickly in a number of cities, that there will be a coordinated national effort to try and shut it down”

Someone probably thought that cracking a few skulls and cutting up a few tents would probably make the hippies go away.

Yes, that might have worked in 1991.

But this is 2011. Whether you agree with Occupy Wall Street or not, one thing that should be clear to all of us is that these boys and girls are deadly serious.

One of the “major actions” being planned is a “shut down” of Wall Street.

Of course that will not happen because thousands of law enforcement personnel will be dispatched to protect Wall Street if necessary.

But what does seem clear is that Occupy Wall Street seems determined to take things to the next level.

In this video, a wild-eyed protester can be seen making the following statement….

“On the 17th, we gonna burn this city to the ************* ground.”

Later on in the video, the same protester makes an even more inflammatory statement….

“No more talking. They’ve got guns, we’ve got bottles. They’ve got bricks, we’ve got rocks…in a few days you’re going to see what a Molotov cocktail can do to Macy’s.”

That is a very frightening statement.

As I noted the other day, one recent survey found that 31 percent of all Occupy Wall Street protesters “would support violence to advance their agenda”.

Let us hope that cooler heads prevail and that we don’t see outbreaks of violence.

If we do see violence in the coming days, it will just give law enforcement authorities an excuse to crack down even harder.

Up to this point, local law enforcement authorities have been advised to seek “legal reasons” for evicting Occupy protesters.

Since just about everything is illegal in America today, that has not been too difficult. So far “zoning laws”, “curfew rules” and regulations that target homeless people have been used as justifications to evict Occupy protesters.

In New York City, Mayor Bloomberg has said that protesters can gather in Zuccotti Park, but that “the rules” do not allow them to have tents, sleeping bags or any sort of heavy equipment.

So will the protesters go along with this, or will this turn into a prolonged struggle over Zuccotti Park?

It is hard to say, but one thing is for sure – police all over the nation have already shown that they are prepared to use brutal force against these protesters in order to get their way.

We have seen tear gas used, we have seen pepper spray cannons used, we have seen rubber bullets used and we have seen flash-bang stun grenades used.

And they are just warming up. When it comes to protecting “national security”, there is a vast array of technologies and weapons that law enforcement authorities have at their disposal.

Many Americans are cheering the crackdown on these protesters, but we all should remember that real people are getting seriously injured. For example, just check out this photo of 84-year-old Dorli Rainey after pepper spray was blasted directly into her face.

Rainey and several other Occupy Seattle protesters are still in the hospital.

Ready for another example?

You can see video of a female Occupy Cal protester being brutally yanked by her hair right here.

How would you feel if that was you?

We all need to realize that these confrontations are not just a bunch of “fun and games”.